The G8: Obama and the Grey-Suit Brigade
Some politicians are men for the moment. History makers. Like Washington, Lincoln, Churchill and Roosevelt. Others fade more quickly into the past and are merely historical footnotes, gap year custodians between periods of real social, economic and political progress. Such passengers to history are missing the “X factor” gene. Sound of mind, but grey suited in both vision and appearance.
I look at the leaders at the G8 conference and then a little deeper into the pack of accompanying finance ministers and I see one man with a Phd in charisma but an unfortunate majority of grey suited professional box-tickers. If one bad apple can ruin a basket, can one fresh Obama, turn stale minds fresh? I fear not.
Of particular concern, Obama aside, is the void of up-lifting oratory skills and global leadership potential. Inspiration by committee is not inspiration at all. It’s bureaucracy. Even more frustrating is the recent political trend of stating blindingly obvious facts about the global economic crisis without so much as waving vaguely towards an intellectually robust solution.
I quote a G8 finance minister. It doesn’t matter which one, as you would receive a near word-for-word copy from other ministers:
“Financial institutions in many countries took on too much risk. It is also clear that some financial institutions had little appreciation of what was going on inside their businesses.”
I am not referring to a perceptive on-the-spot analysis from summer 2008. The speech was today, 8th July 2009. The rest of the speech was even less useful and predictably involved one box-ticker, the speaker, confirming further legions of box-tickers would tick a lot more boxes going forward from their regulatory and quasi-governmental offices. Notably, there was a lot of hot air about the need for more than one regulatory body. Three was the suggestion. Chuck enough teams of box-tickers at a problem, from different angles, and one bureaucrat might fall upon a future banking crisis by accident. It’s worth a try? The previous regulatory regime needed to be told there was a banking crisis, by the press, who were filming the public execute the first run on a British bank in over a hundred years.
Seriously though, Obama can’t do everything by himself. He’s got his hands full relieving Russia of rusty nuclear weapons, dealing with North Korea’s attitude problem, persuading Iran not to re-name Tel Aviv “Tehran-on-Sea”, the war in Afghanistan and a $10 trillion dollar credit card bill registered to his home address, left by the previous occupant.
